Playing With My Computer, A Wild Adventure

At least for me it is.

I’m not too sure how adventurous or interesting you will find it.

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I turned on my computer’s speech-to-text program this afternoon. Lonnie found me a mic that hangs from my ear. I went back through the tutorial, and ventured forth into a grand new world of verbal freedom. Or so I thought.

Nearly every sentence needs edited in at least two places. The dratted program doesn’t automatically capitalize the beginning of a sentence if it has quotation marks first. Half the long words (6 or more letters) get broken into smaller ones that sound sort of like my intended choice.

I am being told that in a week or two it should be zeroed in for my voice and speech pattern, but that kind of defeats the purpose. I turned the program on so that I could still work on these projects while I have an incapacitated hand. By the time the speech-to-text is finally working right, the wrist should be healed, and I won’t need it anymore.

Yet another lesson in patience.

I should learn it one of these days. Maybe after that life won’t have so many obnoxious speed bumps.

Who am I kidding?

One of my favorite movie lines is from The Princess Bride when Inigo says “I hate waiting.”

Why?

Because, you guessed it, I hate waiting.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Y7ScfaVHs

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On a lighter note, my husband discovered several Steam Punk magazines that are open to submissions of flash fiction. So, today (right after he told me) I sat down and told the computer a story. Then had to edit the snot out of it because it was totally messed up. I have a very nice post London Blitz what-if scenario flash story. Six hundred and fifty words (last time I checked).

I think I’ll get the submission details and fire it off as soon as possible. That way I won’t have time to play my own what-if game and psych myself out of sending it.

I got a little ways into a zombie flash before my honey set a plate of lasagna in front of me. Hopefully that one will be finished some time tomorrow.

If all goes reasonably well I’m considering making it a point to write a Steam Punk flash fiction piece a week. If nothing else it will give me more practice at finishing a writing project. Heh. *Looks guiltily around the room* Not that I have trouble with that or anything.

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Have you ever sent something in to a magazine (e-zines included)?

Did they publish it? What happened?

And…

What kind of results do you get out of any speech-to-text programs you use?

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